A PR announcement of an initiative to form a coalition to investigate making it easier to use security tools that most people don't care about. How thoughtful of you, Google. This wouldn't be an attempt at improving the public's negative view of you with regard to privacy issues, now would it?
Funny how Google doesn't offer a messaging service that's secured to a physical device the way Apple does, and these projects when combined would result in something like that.
You seem to imply that there is no real value in the initiative. I humbly suggest you ask the teams doing all the work (Guardian Project, Open Whisper Systems, F-Droid, etc.) how excited they are about this. I suspect it's not as intangible or fuzzy as you imagine. They're expecting real resources and real funding, which will result in real progress for their already-strapped projects.
I'm sure they're very happy to get funding. The fact that they're excited to get money for their projects does not mean their projects have value, or that most people will be affected by them.
Funny how Google doesn't offer a messaging service that's secured to a physical device the way Apple does, and these projects when combined would result in something like that.